If a pharmaceutical company offered me or any other doctor money to prescribe one of its drugs, we would be expected to reject it. Despite criticism from the Inquirer Editorial Board and City Council, Mayor Nutter’s decision to reject an antiobesity program funded by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with money from the soda lobby is just as sound. Such industry support is designed to dissuade city officials from enacting a soda tax…

This excerpt of from an article originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, written by David Grande, MD, 9/16/2011.

David Grande is a physician and a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and a National Physicians Alliance Founding Board Member.
He can be reached at dgrande@wharton.upenn.edu.